Conventionally, a sintered formed body made of a glass has been obtained in a manner that an inorganic material including glass particles is formed in a predetermined shape by using an organic binder, and after that, the organic binder is removed and the glass is sintered and solidified through sintering.
For example, it has been known to obtain a housing for an electric equipment in a manner that various green sheets are produced by using a paste prepared by adding an organic binder to an inorganic material including glass particles and ceramic particles, the obtained green sheets are used as they are or a plurality of pieces thereof are combined to be sintered, the resultants are then formed to have a desired shape, and then sintered to obtain a sintered formed body.
Further, it has been known that in a sealing glass used for sealing glass substrates or the like, a paste prepared by adding an organic binder, a solvent, or the like to an inorganic material including glass particles is, for example, sandwiched between desired regions of a pair of glass substrates facing each other and then sintered to make the sealing glass which seals the glass substrates. In an article such as a glass package obtained in a manner as described above, the sealing glass is used as a member which configures a part of the article.
Furthermore, recently, a sintered formed body has been manufactured by combining glass particles and an organic binder in a three-dimensional printing technique. Concretely, there has been known a method, as one of methods in the three-dimensional printing, in which a compressed powder layer is prepared for forming each individual layer of a desired product, and an operation in which an organic binder is adhered to the powder layer in a two-dimensional pattern, and then a new powder layer is prepared on the layer, and an organic binder is adhered in a two-dimensional pattern, is repeated, to thereby obtain a three-dimensionally-formed three-dimensional formed article, and it has been proposed to use a glass particle as the powder in the method (refer to Patent Reference 1(JP-A No. 2006-515812), for example).